Benefits of everyday encounters while being out and about: The neighborhood familiarity scale

Fleeting social and local encounters in the neighborhood might counteract the social uncertainty that sustains loneliness. Yet no existing scale specifically assesses the underlying social and local processes of these encounters. We developed and validated the Neighborhood Familiarity Scale using a multi-method approach to measure the impact of neighborhood encounters. First, eleven qualitative interviews using the “neighborhood go-along method” and five expert pre-tests were conducted to generate the items. Second, the scale was validated via an online survey. An exploratory ( n = 161) and a confirmatory ( n = 320) factor analysis confirmed two distinct factors: Social and local neighborhood familiarity . They represent the legibility of both social relations and the public space in the neighborhood. The scale was validated convergently using sense of neighborhood, place dependence , and place identity, and discriminatively using social dis-connectedness . Third, structural equation modeling ( n = 481) examined local mobility as a predictor for neighborhood familiarity. We found that cycling was significantly positively associated with local and social familiarity, sense of neighborhood, place identity, and negatively associated with social dis-connectedness. Notably, another mode of local mobility, being out and about with toddlers, predicted neighborhood familiarity, while driving or public transit showed no significant effects. We controlled for homeownership, length of residence, and age. These findings point to social correlates of local active mobility. The Neighborhood Familiarity Scale provides a validated instrument for urban planning and policy to capture the positive social psychological correlates of active mobility.